Ornithologies of Desire develops ecocritical reading strategies
that engage scientific texts, field guides, and observation. Focusing
on poetry about birds and birdwatching, this book argues that attending
to specific details about the physical world when reading environmentally
conscious poetry invites a critical humility in the face of environmental
crises and evolutionary history.

The poetry and poetics of Don McKay provide Ornithologies of Desire
with its primary subject matter, which is predicated on attention
to ornithological knowledge and avian metaphors. This focus on birds
enables a consideration of more broadly ecological relations and concerns,
since an awareness of birds in their habitats insists on awareness
of plants, insects, mammals, rocks, and all else that constitutes
place. The book’s chapters are organized according to: apparatus
(that is, science as ecocritical tool), flight, and song.

Reading McKay’s work alongside ecology and ornithology, through
flight and birdsong, both challenges assumptions regarding humans’
place in the earth system and celebrates the sheer virtuosity of lyric
poetry rich with associative as well as scientific details. The resulting
chapters, interchapter, and concordance of birds that appear in McKay’s
poetry encourage amateurs and specialists, birdwatchers and poetry
readers, to reconsider birds in English literature on the page and
in the field.

Travis V. Mason teaches English and Canadian studies at Dalhousie
and Mount St. Vincent Universities. After completing his Ph.D. at
the University of British Columbia, he studied ecopoetry in South
Africa as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow before moving to Halifax to
study Canadian literary responses to science with a Killam Postdoctoral
Fellowship. His articles have appeared in books and journals, including
Canadian Literature, Studies in Canadian Literature,
The Dalhousie Review, Kunapipi, and Mosaic.

Reviews

“[This book’s] dedication to exploring the ecological
specificities of McKay’s large body of work is likely to foster
more nuanced readings of many of McKay’s poems in the classroom and
beyond.”

— Terry Goldie, York University, ESC (English Studies in Canada)

“In ecology that edge space [where] things edge up against each
other and a ‘between’ develops is the ecotone, a
transitional area where two communities mingle and things thrive
mightily—coyotes in large urban parks, for instance. Mason
wants to write ‘an experiential criticism that flourishes
in the space between thematics and theory, words and the
world.’ PC [poet-critic] thinks a coyote criticism could be
interesting. She wonders if Mason had something like that in mind
when he wrote the essays called ‘Ecotones,’ one of
which occurs at the end of each section of this book. She loves the shadowy bird tracks in the corner of the
first pages of these pieces.... PC ... has begun to admire [the
book’s] ambition and reach. Mason allows himself to be taught by
McKay’s poems, struggling to think about the world through them,
teasing out McKay’s ideas to test them against his own thought
and experiences. As a poet, PC finds this response moving.... PC
is growing a bit panicky—she’s used up most of her
allotment of words but left so much out! What about the wonderful
bibliography that includes field guides and birdwatchers’
narratives, ornithological reports and literary studies? It will
direct PC’s reading for months or perhaps years to come. The
‘Bird Concordance,’ an appendix that records the
appearances of specific birds in McKay’s poetry, astonishes
her.... And the index—PC is partial to good
indexes—she used this one a lot as she tracked through the
book. It never led her astray.”

— Maureen Scott Harris, The Goose

“Psssssst. Literary critic Travis Mason has been outside watching
birds and inside reading field guides, scientific articles, and
biology textbooks. He approaches his subject of ‘avian
poetics’
with a solid background in natural history and is therefore able
to forge a scientifically grounded ecocriticism. Ornithologies of
Desire is an important new ecocritical study of birds, poetry,
and Canadian literature. Most valuable of all, this book places
contemporary Canadian poet Don McKay among the great North
American nature writers. Mason’s book will make you want to read
McKay—and then go outside and watch birds.”

— Cheryll Glotfelty, English Department, University of Nevada, Reno

“Indispensable to scholars of contemporary Canadian poetry.
Perhaps the book’s most striking feature is its unusual
structure. Every two to three chapters, there is an interlude
chapter or, as he calls them, ‘ecotones,’ which are
‘areas where two ecosystem meet at their edges and create a
third ecosystem’ (32). By mixing academic prose with these
ecotones, the book lives up to the author’s promise to write
‘polyphonically’ )xi).... Mason’s writing is full of
vitality and quotable moments, conveying his enthusiasm for
birds, McKay, and ecocriticism. This is a beautiful book.”

— John Claborn, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, ISLE (Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment)

“Mason’s work allows readers to explore critical depths in
the poetry of McKay and to understand how the trope of birding
resonates. But more than that, Mason makes readers realize why
bird poetry still matters in 21st-century poetics....
Recommended.”

— K. Gale, University of Nebraska, CHOICE

“A new addition to a burgeoning Environmental Humanities series,
Travis V. Mason’s Ornithologies of Desire makes a
significant contribution to ecocriticism in Canada. The book
opens with the proposition that ecocriticism is able ‘to
read across genres and disciplines, to listen to many different
stories, and to speak/write polyphonically.’ Throughout,
Mason works to prove his point by engaging in the
cross-disciplinary, multi-vocal scholarship he proposes.... The
result is a highly informative study that offers memorable new
readings of McKay’s well-known body of work.... McKay’s work has
never had such a detailed equipment of ornithological knowledge
brought to bear upon it, and that in itself is enough to make the
book a valuable resource. The study also snares a significant
characteristic with the works of some other young ecological
scholars in Canada, insofar as it blends scholarly and artistic
form. Interspersed between the book’s conventionally academic
readings are three ‘ecotones’—chapters that
take up Mason’s desire to merge ecocritical and poetic attention
by narrating, and eventually versifying, his own critical
enterprise. Through the self-relfexive persona of a character
named BC (birder-critic), Mason presents an autobiographical
account of his apprenticeship as a student of poetry and nature.
Although referring to oneself in the third-person risks its own
brand of self-service, the gesture is obviously meant as homage
to McKay’s signature blend of creative and critical styles. Mason
joins a long tradition of writers who look to McKay as an example
of conscientious thought and instruction, and
Ornithologies is a substantial contribution to an
emergent critical project of recognizing (and thereby helping to
inscribe) McKay’s definitive influence over the growth of
eco-poetics and -criticism in Canada.”